Hitch and the Prance of Pegasus Passion
“Alright, Hitch. You’ve got this. Sunny and Izzy helped build the wings. You practiced the moves. And put up with Sprout’s staring and snickering while you practiced. You. Can. Do this!” Hitch hid in a bush and tested the cable harness that was tied around his chest, attached to a pair of wings. Pulling the cables down made the wings flare out majestically, and small hoof movements allowed him to manipulate the positions of his wings. Izzy really was quite the genius at these things when she wanted to be.
Now, he only had to wait for his audience.
Speaking of whom, Pipp and Zipp were casually trotting along, looking around as the young ponies of all three tribes were playing in the park. Pipp had her phone out, recording the local activity and speaking into the phone.
“Good Morning, all you lovely Pipp-squeaks! I’m here in Maretime Bay for lunch, and thought you might like a look around the town. We’re passing by the city park right now, but soon you’ll see the gorgeous coastline here! I can’t do it justice with the camera, you’ve really got to come see it yourself, but….”
Pipp trailed off as Zipp stopped in her tracks. A familiar stallion was standing from within the bushes ahead of them, rearing up on his hind legs
Hitch tugged the cables down, flaring out his cardboard wings and walking around on his hind hooves. They glittered in the light, mostly because they’d been covered in glitter laid out to reflect the general look of feathers.He scratched at the grass, occasionally leaning down to press his nose against the ground, his tail flaring up like a rooster’s.
“Is that... Hitch?” Pipp asked under her voice as the sisters watched the display.
“Seems so,” Zipp whispered back with a nod. “He’s got good balance, though.”
Hitch kept trotting around on his hind hooves, flaring out those fake wings before he let out an undulating cry of, “Carah-Arah-Arooo!”
“Are you recording this, Pipp?” Zipp asked.
“Of course.”
Hitch kept strutting, clucking like a chicken, scratching and pecking at the ground.
“Braaawk, buk buk buk Bagaaawk!”
Finally, Zipp couldn’t take it any more.
“Hitch? What are you doing?”
Hitch stopped pulling at the rigging, lowering his forehooves to the ground as he looked over to the two royal pegasi. His wings held up pretty well despite all the activity.
“Uhm, wasn’t that a traditional pegasus courting dan...” he said, trailing off as he suddenly realized something.
“There is no traditional pegasus courting dance, is there?”
“If there is, it’s news to me,” Pipp answered cheerfully as Zipp shook her head slowly.
Hitch blushed.
“We’re not birds,” Zipp pointed out.
Hitch shifted his hooves to lower the wings back against his body, looking around at the park ponies who were all staring at the Sheriff of Maretime Bay. Wearing a set of cardboard wings. All covered with glitter and a stupidly elaborate cable system.
Acting like a chicken.
Then he saw Pipp’s phone, and his expression turned from embarrassment to horror. “A-are you livestreaming this?”
“No,” Pipp answered with a giggle. “I can’t get a good enough signal here to stream yet, so I’ve been recording this to put it up later.”
Hitch relaxed a bit. “Oh, good. Maybe you can edit that out, then.”
“Maaaybe I can. Did you make those wings yourself?”
“Actually, Sunny made the wings and Izzy got them rigged to flare out with a tug of the cables,” he admitted. “We uh… kinda… all worked together on the design.”
“That explains the glitter,” Zipp noted.
Pipp added, “It’s really kind of perfectly on that line between endearing and cringeworthy. Points for effort! But there’s one more question.”
Zipp followed, “Which of us were you trying to impress?”
“Uhm, well,” Hitch admitted, “Kind of... either of you?”
Zipp and Pipp looked at each other before they both let out a chuckle. Zipp stepped forward first, brushing the tip of one wing from his shoulder back to his flank, “You have a lot to learn about Pegasi. Maybe we can both teach you a thing or two.”
Pipp followed up, mirroring Zipp’s motion back to Hitch’s cutie mark. “Including how to properly flirt like a pegasus.”
Zipp smiled over Hitch at Pipp. “Oh, I think he’ll figure that one out himself. Come on, Casaneighva, we were going to go get lunch.”
“Consider it a first date,” Pipp agreed, turning off her phone as they started leading Hitch out of the park and towards the coast.
Up in the recently rebuilt tower of the lighthouse, Sunny and Izzy were watching through the new telescope. Well, Izzy was watching, Sunny was practically vibrating waiting for her report.
“Ooh, looks like it worked really well!” Izzy grinned at the sight of Hitch and the two pegasi leaving the park.
“Let me see!” Sunny excitedly took Izzy’s place, looking through at her foalhood friend with a pegasus on either side of him. “Aww… I just hope this doesn’t create a rift between them. Still, it’s nice to see that it worked!”
“I do wonder what they were saying,” Izzy admitted. ”It looked like it wasn’t going to work at first.”
“We’ll have to ask later,” Sunny shrugged a little and looked up from the telescope.
“Sooo… is there anything I should know about unicorn courtship?”
Izzy tapped her chin with a hoof, tilting her head from side to side.
“I mean… you might have heard that unicorns are only interested in virgins. That’s actually a myth.”
“Well, that’s a relief.”
Izzy raised an eyebrow and smirked as she glanced over at the earth pony.
“Oh, is it?”
Sunny’s cheeks flushed a bright red as Izzy’s smirk grew into a grin.
Two weeks later in Zephyr Heights, Pipp and Zipp were in the abandoned station beneath the castle. Pipp had her fluffy white wings folded over her face as Zipp paced around. Outside, echoing from elsewhere in the city, a cacophonous chorus of clucking and crowing
“He asks you to edit it out, and what do you do instead?”
“I only said I’d think about it!” Pipp whined.
“You hire David Attensparrow to narrate it instead!”
“I thought it’d get others to see the humor in the situation?”
Zipp sighed and facehoofed.
“Okay. so, you got your views, you got your likes, you got your subscribers. Congratulations! I guess you were right, you did say it was going to go viral!”
“Like the feather flu,” Pipp agreed with a whimper.
“BAGAWK!”
Pipp and Zipp looked up at Zoom Zephyrwing, the guard perched on the open frame of the window, looking down at them hopefully.
“Like the feather flu,” Zipp agreed.
